Yell-free for a month. How I made it that far.

I have not yelled in a little over a month.

And I have had plenty of reasons to yell.

Plenty.

When the photographer was at the front door and all my kids were hysterically crying over what they were (NOT!) going to wear, I didn’t yell.

When Number 3 decided that he was going to boycott the photo shoot, and had a meltdown of epic proportions, I didn’t yell.

When I dropped my phone and it totally broke, I didn’t yell.

When I went to the phone store and had no free upgrades and no insurance because I’ve already broken too many phones and had to pay $200 to get the screen fixed and they didn’t have any cases that fit my phone and I got my new, fixed phone back home and 22 hours later dropped it on the floor and broke the fucking screen,

I still didn’t yell.

I might have said fuck close to 100 times.

But I said it quietly.

When Number 7 cut her own hair,

again,

and when I found her in the kitchen chugging maple syrup straight from the biggest bottle of syrup ever known to mankind,

and when she got a hold of Number 3’s cup, (not a drinking cup, but the one he shoves in his underpants for baseball),

and she was trying to drink milk out of it,

and when she took every single article of clothing out of her dresser and closet and covered her bedroom floor with clothes that I had just spent half the morning folding, organizing, and putting away,

I didn’t yell.

When I asked Number 4 not to touch the pitcher on the counter, and then that’s exactly what she did and spilled everything inside of it all over the counter, down the front of the cabinets, and all over the floor, I didn’t yell.

When I asked Number 3 to go brush his teeth and he pretended to be asleep on the couch and didn’t move (and that pretending-to-sleep-thing really fucking pisses me off), I didn’t yell.

When I told Number 2 he had to go back and finish cleaning the kitchen the way I asked him to and he started mumbling under his breath (which is almost as annoying as the pretending to be asleep thing) and giving me a bunch of teenage attitude, I didn’t yell.

When Number 6 took my phone off of the counter, and I asked him to put it back, and then he took off running (and the making-a-run-for-it thing rivals the pretending-to-be-asleep and the mumbling teenager with attitude on the list of Shit that Pisses Me Off), I didn’t yell.

How did I manage this?

Well, by doing a number of things:

1) Rather than fighting the current, I started going with the flow.

You know when you are trying to do something and your kid comes in and interrupts you and you just need five more minutes and so you frantically try to get her to leave you alone by bribing and pleading and suggesting and begging and then it turns into a massive meltdown because she keeps whining and you keep begging and then you lose your patience and your kid is still whining and now you are screaming but now you’ve threatened to dismember your child and now she is yelling and crying and so you sentence her to a timeout and now she is screaming hysterically and asking you repeatedly through the sobs Can I come out yet? and you ultimately have to completely stop doing whatever it was that you were doing anyway because now you can’t even hear yourself think?

Yeah. I stopped doing that.

The two year old is the worst… the equivalent of a drug sniffing dog.

She knows exactly the moment I have managed to sit down at the computer.

And that is when she inevitably says, “Mommy, I want to sit in your lap.”

Trying to do anything on the computer with a two-year-old around is like shoveling during a snow storm or brushing your teeth while you are eating Oreos.

I used to do everything I could to distract her and keep her from climbing into my lap.

It never worked. She always managed to squeeze her way up there.

And rather than go with the flow, and take a short break, I was bound and determined to send that email or finish that post or whatever it was I was doing while continuously battling to keep her from repeatedly pressing every single button on the keyboard and ripping the mouse off of its cord and consequently, wanting to rip the hair out of my own head.

I was caught in a riptide.

So I stopped and I just let her sit in my lap.

You can’t negotiate with a two-year-old.

Being allowed to sit on my lap and press buttons all of the sudden made doing it much less appealing.

And how did I so easily forget how short her attention span is?

A two-year-old is easily distracted.

I forgot that if I just give her five minutes, and oftentimes less, she will soon grow tired of whatever it is that she was relentlessly fighting for.

That five minute investment usually yields a pretty decent payoff.

Once she’s taken a good hit of sitting in my lap, she’s good to go for while.

2) I’m getting better at zero tolerance. 

I am still working on this, but I’m doing much better with giving the kids second (and third and fourth) chances.

Especially when I know there is no confusion on what the rules are.

When the kids decide to do something that they know is not allowed, I’ve been doing my best to crack down immediately.

Number 3 and 4 are in the let’s-hit-each-other-for-no-fucking-reason stage.

I can’t stand it.

I know it is going to take a lot of consistency to eradicate this behavior.

But rather than yell or say If you do that one more time, I’ve been really trying to take action right away. I remove offenders from the dinner table or the pool or the playroom on the spot.

Last week Number 3 was removed from the playroom after kicking Number 4, and he missed out on watching tv that night.

He kept coming out of his room and asking, “Mom, can I come down now?”

I finally quietly told him, “When you kick people, you stay in your room. You are not coming down tonight. You can come downstairs in the morning.”

He was a little shocked.

Yes, the behavior is still there. I know it’s not going to totally disappear anytime soon. But it is slowly happening less and less.

Knowing a consequence is coming immediately is much more of a deterrent than just having to endure listening to me yell, lecture, or scream like a lunatic.

3) Presentation, presentation, presentation (and continuing to get up off my ass).

Expecting the kids to occupy themselves for limited periods of time is not unreasonable. But repeatedly saying to them, “Find something to do together! Why don’t you play with the Legos? What about coloring?” while I sat up in the office wasn’t working. And it often led to yelling, or separating, and useless time-outs.

But when I got up off my butt and physically set something up for them to do, they became much more enthusiastic and engaged. I wasn’t suggesting any different activities, but the way in which I was suggesting them was different.

This hasn’t always resulted in huge amounts of time for me, but I can usually count on between ten and thirty minutes of the kids playing quietly and cooperating and giving me a little bit of time to get something done.

4) I continue to be realistic.

My parents were on vacation for the last two weeks, and my dad is my babysitter.

I wasn’t going to have any help with the kids during the entire time they were gone.

A month ago, I would have been completely unrealistic. I would have set myself up with lists and expectations that were unreasonable, and then when the kids got in the way of meeting all of my self-imposed deadlines, I would have lost it on them.

Not this time.

This time, I accepted reality.

Making that shift, not expecting to accomplish the impossible, changed my whole perspective.

I prioritized.

And that was another big step for me: determining the difference between the things that I wanted to get done and the things that I needed to get done.

Once I whittled down the to do list, the pressure was alleviated.

And the result wasn’t only that I stopped yelling, but that I spent more time with the kids.

We went to the beach.

I swam with them in the pool rather than trying to multitask and respond to messages and emails while keeping an eye on them.

I found myself saying not right now much less frequently.

And that right there has been the biggest payoff.

I thought stopping the yelling would make me a better parent.

It has.

But in more ways than one.

It hasn’t just quieted me down.

It’s quieted us all down.

And it hasn’t just started to change my children’s behavior.

It’s changed mine.

It’s brought me closer to my kids.

It’s directed me to a place where I am spending more quality time with them and making memories with them.

And if that’s not motivation to stay the no-yelling course, I don’t know what is.